Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Texas Wingnut Plays Armchair Psychologist

Larry Smith is a Republican candidate for Congress in Texas, with all of the twisted beliefs that post comes with. He also apparently thinks he’s a psychologist, diagnosing President Obama with a rare psychiatric disorder — but getting it completely backwards. Try to figure out this “logic.”

Larry Smith, candidate for Texas’ most southern Congressional District, finds significant indications that President Obama has purposefully placed children into harm’s way for his own benefit. People who intentionally hurt children for attention can be accused of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. The facts surrounding the surge of unaccompanied, non-citizen children across the border support this charge.

In June 2012, President Obama announced Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in a memorandum that encouraged prosecutorial discretion when processing illegal immigrant children. Shortly after the release of this memorandum, the Office of Refugee Resettlement began to see a spike in the number of unaccompanied children who were referred to it…

Smith said in a statement, “American society is riddled with mandatory reporters, such as teachers and doctors, who have the obligation to alert the authorities to prevent children from being harmed. Any adult who clearly sees danger for a child would step in to prevent it. President Obama, when requesting transport services for 65,000 unaccompanied children earlier this year, saw the coming harm and did nothing to stop it. These unfortunate children have become pawns to benefit Obama’s push for his unpopular and destructive immigration policies.”

“The president could see the trends clearly enough to accurately estimate the number of children who would need services, months in advance of their arrival. There is no question that he saw, just as clearly, that his announcement of DACA in 2012 began this abusive and unlawful trend.”

“Today, we hear of reports that children are being abused, being used by drug cartels, and even dying. If a high school administrator prompted such mass abuse, that person would quickly be without a job and perhaps even found behind bars. The mental stability of the school administrator would be in question. Is a President of the United States who does such horrific acts deserving of less scrutiny and accountability?”

What…the…fuck? These children didn’t flee Central America because Obama was abusing them, for crying out loud, they’re fleeing a horrible situation. And the Obama administration is trying to take care of them, make sure they’re fed and clothed and have a place to stay while the process for handling their refugee status can work. It’s Smith and his fellow Republicans, like Ted Cruz, who are demanding that they be rounded up and shipped back to those horrible situations. It’s his ideological companions who are surrounding their buses and shouting xenophobic things at them. If anyone here is pushing for the mistreatment of those kids, it’s him and his fellow conservatives. What a hypocritical asshole.

I may be missing something (I didn’t read the original article), but I don’t see any “backwards.” Smith doesn’t understand what Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy at all. He just saw words “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy” next to “harms children” and then ran with it.

Any adult who clearly sees danger for a child would step in to prevent it.

Not only is this not true, I don’t know of even one conservative Christian who attends a theologically conservative church that attempts to prevent the abuse of children and in particular, gay children that attend those churches. These children are subject to uncountable and outrageous lies, indoctrination, attempts to instill fear, social pressure to conform or suffer ostracism and eternal hellfire, and for the gay children – told they are uniquely defective humans if they’re not heterosexual.

To date we’ve seen zero conservative denominations end the abuse of children in their congregations. So if there are non-abusing conservative Christian congregants in existence, to date they’ve had little if any significant impact. Except perhaps those attempting to end there church’s bullying of gay children, but that abuse in no way entails all the abuse these children suffer.

If Larry Smith attends a theologically conservative church, then he’s an effective abuser of children; and a far cry from an advocate of children.

As for “logic”, that too runs true to form. If they can blame Obama for something that happened in another administration (e.g. that of GW Bush) they can blame him for something that happens in another country.

Riddled means perforated with holes, the implication being that the fabric of whatever has been riddled has been damaged and weakened, perhaps on the verge of falling apart. This is the word he uses to describe the effect of mandatory reporters of child abuse on American society.

These children didn’t flee Central America because Obama was abusing them, for crying out loud, they’re fleeing a horrible situation.

Much of which was created by Obama, backed by his loyal Secretary of State Clinton, allowing and supporting a military coup against the elected (and mildly reformist) president of Honduras in 2009, thus setting in motion a domino-style collapse of legitimate institutions in that country.

For the sake of consistency, Smith should also point a finger at Clinton signing NAFTA, predictably devastating the Mexican economy and producing a flood of desperate emigrants surging northwards – from which, perhaps, the Democratic Party today does garner some benefits. Of course then some smartass might point out that NAFTA originated in the Dubya-Daddy administration, but corporate-media allergy to historical context would shield Smith and his partisan colleagues from any meaningful examination of that.